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Rod Gardner career statistics

I'm sure I'm not the first person to point this out, but Gardner does not fit the physical profile of the receivers that Spurrier has had success with at UF.

Rod Gardner:      6'2"  218

Willie Jackson:   6'1"  203
Travis Taylor:    6'1"  200
Darrell Jackson:  6'0"  199
Ike Hilliard:     5'11" 195
Reche Caldwell:   5'11" 194
Jabbar Gaffney:   6'1"  193
Reidel Anthony:   5'11" 180
Jacquez Green:    5'9"  168

(Note that the 203 listed next to Jackson's name is his rookie year weight. He's now listed at 210.)

What this means I have no idea. I can't imagine that Spurrier can't find a way to use a talented big receiver, but as far as I know, he never has before.

If you haven't read the Anthony Thomas comment, do that before reading on.

[...twittles thumbs...]

All set? Good. Gardner, like Thomas, was old for a rookie last year. He's almost a year older than David Boston. So I'll attempt here to answer the same question for receivers as I did for running backs in the Thomas comment. The set up is exactly the same. Here are the results:

Future VBD  =  623  +  .43*("VBD" in rookie year)  -  22*(age in rookie year)

R^2 = .05

This differs from the RB results in a couple of ways. First, the R-squared is much lower, indicating that trying to project a WR's career based on data from his rookie year is doomed to failure. Second, it's interesting that the age variable was roughly equally significant for WRs as for RBs. But, the rookie year "VBD" was absolutely unquestionably significant in the RB case and is only borderline significant for WRs.

In general, a receiver's rookie year gives you almost zero information about how he'll eventually turn out. To the extent that it does, though, I think we have some evidence here that -- all else equal -- a young rookie has a bit more potential than an older rookie.

Complete data set